The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!

Readers may be familiar with Francis W. Porretto, who used to blog at Eternity Road. That blog came to a sudden halt this week, due to unforeseen circumstances, but he's already back in the blog-saddle at Liberty's Torch (with frequent excursions to Musings Of An Indie Writer, where he discusses his books). Mr. Porretto, I'm glad you're still with us. (He advised earlier that anyone wanting copies of archived posts from Eternity Road should contact him for more information. I suggest you do so via a comment at his new blog-home.)

The next article isn't from a blog, and isn't really an article either, but it's still very useful. I've had many uses for military paracord (also known as 550 cord) over the years, but I've found it very difficult to get hold of the genuine milspec product - most of what's sold commercially is an inferior imitation of the real thing. As Wikipedia points out:

While some commercially available paracord is made to specification, even when labeled as such a given product may not correspond exactly to a specific military type and can be of differing construction, quality, color, or strength. Particularly poor quality examples may have significantly fewer strands in the sheath or core, cores constructed of bulk fiber rather than individual yarns, or include materials other than nylon.

Jeep was developed by the American Bantam Car Company. The design was purchased by the US Government from American Bantam and given to Willys-Overland with large orders going to Ford. Immediately after WWII American Bantam went bankrupt.

At the conclusion of WWII, Willys-Overland and Ford fought it out over who owned the Jeep design … a court ruled that the rights to the Jeep name and design were owned by Willys-Overland. Although the Jeep sold well in the post war years for Willys-Overland, they struggled with the rest of their auto business, and in 1953 Willys-Overland was purchased by Kaiser Motors.

The Jeep sold well for Kaiser, but the rest of their car biz sank like a stone. In 1963 Kaiser renamed itself Kaiser-Jeep. Business only got worse for Kaiser-Jeep through the 60′s, so in 1969 Kaiser-Jeep was acquired by AMC.

The Jeep sold well for AMC, but their car biz went from bad to worse during the 70′s, and in 1979 AMC was purchased by Renault.

More at the link. It's certainly thought-provoking enough to make a canny investor think twice before buying the Jeep brand name, if Fiat ever spins it off from Chrysler!

... the health care law’s troubles shed some further light on the crisis of American progressivism and the blue social model it has built. Those who believe in the blue model and want to extend it have lost their touch; the dream machines of the blue social engineers don’t sail serenely across the azure sky anymore. Think of the various carbon exchanges and environmental planetary schemes; think of high speed rail proposals like California’s $100 billion train to bankruptcy; think of Obamacare. These days the experts, “social entrepreneurs” and smart young blue twenty somethings fresh out of the Ivy League whomp up social programs with as much verve and dedication as their New Deal and Great Society predecessors, but the new Dreamliners don’t take off. At most they roll around the runway, emitting clouds of noxious smoke; wings fall off, windows pop out, turbines misfire and the tires go flat.

. . .

This is a horrible piece of legislation — as misbegotten and useless to its friends as it is menacing to its enemies. The question is: why? Why did the blues write such a bad law? Why, given a once in a lifetime chance to pass a program that Dems have longed to achieve ever since the New Deal, did they craft a sloppy mess that nobody understands and few admire, and then leave their law so unnecessarily vulnerable to constitutional challenge?

The answers tell us much about why blue progressive thinking is losing its hold on the body politic — and why blue methods generally aren’t working as well as they used to.